Image processing applications may add special effects such as blurring to video frame data in order to simulate the natural blur process of a camera lens or the depth of field effect associated with the human visual system. One approach to image blurring may involve the application of a separable two-dimensional (2D) finite impulse response (FIR) filter to the pixels of the image to be blurred. In separable 2D FIR filtering, the blurring process may be conducted as a cascade of two one-dimensional (1D) FIR filters, where the first 1D filter can be applied to the rows of the input image, and the second 1D filter can be applied to the columns of the image output by the first filter. In particular, a rectangular aperture may be defined around each pixel to be processed, wherein the two 1D filters may be applied to the rows and columns falling within the rectangular aperture. While separable 2D filters may be suitable under certain circumstances, there remains considerable room for improvement. For example, the rectangular aperture of separable 2D filters may not adequately model the optical response of a camera lens or the human visual system, which are more circular or elliptical in nature.